


let me go

by a_gay_poster



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, Nara Shikamaru/Temari implied, Prompt Fill, Sequelae of canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 09:07:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18149885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_gay_poster/pseuds/a_gay_poster
Summary: Prompt: "Please just let me go."Marriage, and parenthood, and the consequences of one's choices.





	let me go

“Please, just let me go with them,” Lee begs. His knuckles are white against the smooth sandstone of Gaara’s desk. He rarely begs for anything, anymore, accustomed to his tenure and status. 

Gaara collapses a stack of papers in front of him. Each page clatters to the desk, bones being thrown for augury. 

“Your squad is needed on the Eastern Front,” Gaara says coolly, but he won’t meet Lee’s eyes. “It would be a waste of resources to send two of our best close-range fighters to the same area.”

“Don’t talk to me about strategy right now!” Lee shouts, banging his fist on the desk. The surface rattles. The terra cotta pot of a cactus cracks, soil spilling across the forms. Gaara’s crowded office fills with the freshly dug grave scent of raw earth. 

“My obligation to the village necessitates that I- “ 

“And what about your obligation to our family?” Lee interrupts him, voice ragged. “Our sons, our nephew? They’re just children! Exceptionally smart, and strong, and brave children, but still children.”

“They’re shinobi,” Gaara says. He swallows; his Adam’s apple bobs. “And all hands are needed to defend the village right now.”

Lee’s fingers clench into the papers, crumpling them. Somewhere in there are the mission instructions that could very well send his sons to their deaths.

“Please, Gaara,” he says. His eyes are wet but he refuses to cry. “Be reasonable.”

Gaara looks up at him for the first time since he slammed open the door to his office. His eyes are the clear green of cut glass.

“You’re the one who’s being unreasonable,” he says, his words like a cold knife between ribs. “You knew when you agreed to send them to the academy what they were signing up for.”

“Sure, little C-class missions, delivering vases, escorting old ladies - I was fine with that! And then, when they’re older and more experienced, maybe something more, but this? Gaara, they could _die_.”

“That has always been a risk,” Gaara says. He barely moves his lips, his gaze on Lee’s heavy. Lee feels helpless beneath it, like a patient under incomplete anaesthesia, watching himself being cut apart. “It’s no different than what you or I went through at their age.”

“What you and I went through- “ Lee makes a noise in his throat somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I don’t want that for them. I wanted _better_ for them.” 

“Then you need to let them fight,” Gaara says, “for their own futures. It’s the only way.”

“Then what have we been fighting for our whole lives?” Lee shouts. His fingers rip into the forms on the desk. His shoulders heave with his unsteady breaths. 

Gaara pulls the forms away from his grip with a wave of sand, sterile and distant. From the hallway, the smoke of Shikamaru’s fourth nervous cigarette trails under the door. 

Gaara sighs, his shoulders slumping, his first truly human gesture since the start of their conversation. 

“Kankuro is an exceptionally talented ninja,” he says. “I have the utmost confidence in his abilities as their jounin squad leader to keep the three of them safe.”

Lee rolls his shoulders back, head thrown back to stare at the ceiling. He finds no relief there. He closes his eyes. 

“This is not, and has never been, about Kankuro’s abilities,” he says.

“I know,” Gaara says. He reaches across his desk, hand extended towards Lee. 

Lee looks down at the hand. He doesn’t take it. Gaara’s glass-green eyes are boring into his, pleading. 

Lee lets a wall fall down behind his own eyes. 

“I want you to know,” he says, “if they die, it will kill me.”

Gaara withdraws his hand to rest it on his gourd.

“You would have me lose all three of you,” he says, his voice soft, but sure.

“You would have me lose them,” Lee replies, and his voice doesn’t waver.

Lee slams the door behind him when he leaves. He gestures to Temari and Shikamaru, stiff shouldered on opposite sides of the hall. 

“Let’s go,” he says. “Kazekage’s orders.”


End file.
